Assistant Professor Polish Academy of Sciences Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland
Platynotini is a widely distributed (Afrotropical, Nearctic, Neotropical, Palaearctic, Indomalayan realms) tribe of darkling beetles representing the subfamily Blaptinae. The lineage contains 75 genera and ~590 species divided into two subtribes – Eurynotina (restricted to southern Africa), and Platynotini. Many display interesting evolutionary adaptations to thrive in arid environments, such as longevity of adult forms and ovoviviparity. However, ecological and ethological studies on Platynotini are inhibited by a lack of comprehensive phylogenetic studies. As several species of this tribe are known only from relatively small type series, museomics were implemented to resolve the group's phylogeny. Specifically, target enrichment high throughput sequencing was used to target 548 loci spanning over 170,000 amino acids from both historical and recently collected specimens. Morphological traits were also examined. The applicability of the concatenated datasets (molecular data + morphology) to recover phylogenetic relations at different classification levels (genus, subtribe, tribe) is discussed.